A walk on the wildlife side 8/12 There used to be this furry creature in my backyard sometimes. It would dig through my trash, scratch at my window screens and once I even caught it cowering in a dark corner of my garage. After the fourth or fifth incident, I…
Kelly Berry does the locomotives 8/12 It’s all about trains. Trains and their parts. And if I had been more like my brother, totally interested in anything mechanical and anything with motion, then I might be a ton more psyched about Kelly Berry’s upcoming exhibit at the Magnolia Bar Gallery…
From the small screen to the big stage 8/13 Early reviews of the latest American Idols Live tour report that Carrie Underwood isn’t singing her bone-chilling rendition of Heart’s “Alone.” Of course she’s doing that awful “Inside Your Heaven” song. And for that I advise anybody thinking of attending the…
The contentedly independent filmmaker Jim Jarmusch has brought his restless energy to a series of surreal road movies that move nicely along on the strength of rare characters, quirky humor and a willing embrace of chance adventure. These quest stories for hipsters have transported Jarmusch’s fiercely loyal audience from New…
There has always been much to love about the Dallas Video Festival: its eclectic scheduling of full-length features alongside experimental shorts that last this long, its awards named for unheralded pioneers and visionaries (Ernie Kovacs, and now Albert Maysles) and the unbridled, contagious enthusiasm of its founder and artistic director…
And so, once more, the googolplex emits the stink of the network rerun, this week offering yet another worthless big-screen take on small-screen detritus. As Hollywood wonders–cries, actually, over spilt spoiled milk–why audiences are staying away from theaters, offering theories ranging from the absence of such phenoms as The Passion…
Kirsten Macy With Kirsten Macy and her work, artist and object create total synergy. Like her paintings, collages and videos, Macy is dissonantly colorful, charmingly brash and on her way to a big and bright future. An artist working in various media, from desktop animation to whole-body performance, Macy approaches…
King Ubu The Festival of Independent Theatres runs one more weekend. Try to see this one, a smart and politically relevant update of Ubu Roi by the Second Thought Theatre company. Steven Walters, one of the area’s finest young leading men, teams with Allison Tolman, the most interesting young actress…
If only Zach could see Southern Baptist Sissies, now running at Uptown Players. All summer dozens of online blogs have bounced stories and comments back and forth about Zach, a 16-year-old Tennessee boy whose own Web journal details his fears of being dispatched by his parents to Love in Action,…
There are some obvious questions you ask when buying a car: What kind of gas mileage does it get, what’s the warranty, how’s the crash test rating, will I hate this color in two months, what will the seats look like covered in cherry Slurpee, no, really, how much do…
Thursday, August 4 Rick O’Hara would never tell you to get your head out of the clouds. He’d commend you on having stars in your eyes. Of course, he is the planetarium creator at the Emily Fowler Central Library in Denton. The library welcomes stargazers ages 7 and older to…
The Susan B. Anthony dollar coins are so sad. I mean, really, who uses them? They’re forever being confused with quarters, jamming soda machines, baffling 7-Eleven clerks and sitting unused in change jars across the country. The Susan B. Anthony coin isn’t even the big cheese anymore now that that…
Meet Daryl Sprout, snake fan 8/6 With the National Geographic Channel, PBS, Discovery, Animal Planet et al regularly airing shows about the beauty, necessity and all-around coolness of snakes, you’d think most of America would have gotten the message by now: Don’t fear the snake; the snake is your friend…
To try a triathlon, go someplace else 8/7 Dallas isn’t the greatest city to live in for a competitive triathlete. Being the landlocked wonder that we are you’d think we’d learn to take better care of our bodies of water. But no, the last person to actually swim in White…
Culture clash at the DMA 8/7 There was a time when “art” was a social touchstone in the way that Star Wars, Desperate Housewives or that new Coldplay album is today. It brought people together regardless of critical consensus and generated thought, conversation and debate. For better or for worse,…
Wiggles aren’t just kids’ play 9/29 Between the White Stripes and Warren Zevon in my iTunes library are some 56 Wiggles songs. What the kiddo wants, the kiddo gets, and what he usually wants are “Wiggles, Daddy, more Wiggles.” He’s 2, by the way, which means there are plenty more…
If the Navy is looking for splashy recruiting tools, it could do worse than Stealth, a zillion-dollar action movie stuffed with futuristic jet fighters, glamorous carrier pilots and an overload of explosive, mostly digital derring-do. Here is Top Gun revised and updated, complete with a new array of enemies–swarthy Middle…
Must Love Dogs, it should be clearly stated, is not the greatest romantic comedy ever made about a quirky couple who meet at a dog park. That honor goes to Dog Park, the oddball 1998 flick starring Luke Wilson and Natasha Henstridge, written and directed by former Kids in the…
Conspicuous Production: The First Two Years of the UTD/South Side Artist Residency Usually when artists come to a blasted-out blighted neighborhood they do so to for reasons of cheap rent, large studio space and cool architecture. The trajectory goes something like this: In typical bohemian fashion, artists stake out marginal…
Cabaret The Kander and Ebb musical about the demimonde of sexy singers, writers and hangers-on at Berlin’s Kit Kat Club in the 1930s doesn’t quite come together in WaterTower Theatre’s production. If only the performers were as good as the gloomy, subterranean set by Michael Sullivan. Instead, we get a…
The hot tomato juicing up the new comedy Pico de Gallo: The Return of the Queen is one “Chula Cholula,” a spicy little slice of womanhood who just happens to be played by a man, Oscar Contreras. Chula is a favorite recurring character in shows written and performed by the…
I loved the University of Texas, but college was expensive, and there was a lot of crap to deal with–student loans, expensive housing and a bus that smelled like a baby’s diaper. The Zooniversity, on the other hand, costs next to nothing, and the faculty is nice enough to take…
